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Rapture and Horror: A Phenomenology of Theatrical Invisibility inhttp://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/23526963-04401001
<div><strong> Source: </strong>Volume 44, Issue 1, pp 1 - 26</div><div><i xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/">Macbeth</i> is arguably Shakespeare’s greatest experiment in the phenomenology of horrible imaginings. For all of its visible supernatural trappings, <i xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/">Macbeth</i> is a play radically steeped in the invisible, which exerts a gravitational force on all aspects of performance. The phantom dagger, King Duncan’s slain body, Lady Macbeth’s murky hell—these unseen supernatural sights are as phenomenologically palpable and horrifying in the theater as the weïrd sisters are. Invisible elements of the play’s world permeate the visible, producing a pervasive sense of unease, dread, and horror in the theater. The experience of horror co-exists with another strongly felt experience, that of rapture, which arises especially in moments when the Macbeths are fascinated with invisible phenomena and enter into trance-like states of deep absorption, ecstasy, and madness.</div>Marguerite A. Tassi2018-03-28T00:00:00ZSadeler and Procaccini: The Secular Decoration of Castello Visconti di San Vito in Somma Lombardohttp://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/23526963-04401002
<div><strong> Source: </strong>Volume 44, Issue 1, pp 27 - 46</div><div>The paper investigates the pictorial decoration of Castello Visconti di San Vito in Somma Lombardo, one of the finest examples of Lombard aristocratic villa of the first half of the seventeenth century. Built on a pre-existent medieval structure, the castle was richly decorated by a secular iconographic program that, drawn from Flemish sources, was executed in the period 1604–1609 by an équipe of painters gravitating towards the <i xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/">bottega</i> Procaccini: the most important Milanese workshop of the time. The study, for the first time, retraces the genesis of this commission as well as the execution of the decorative program. Specifically, it individuates the complex series of iconographic sources used by Carlo Antonio Procaccini and his assistants, highlighting a coexistence of both Emilian and Flemish artistic references that is unprecedented in Lombard early Baroque art.</div>Angelo Lo Conte2018-03-28T00:00:00ZMeredith Hanmer’s Career in the Church of England, c. 1570–1590http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/23526963-04401003
<div><strong> Source: </strong>Volume 44, Issue 1, pp 47 - 72</div><div>This article deals with two pivotal decades in the life of Meredith Hanmer, an Anglican divine of Welsh descent who built his career in the Church of England against the backdrop of shifting ecclesiastical policy, religious debate and the upsurge in anti-Catholicism. Hanmer was close to the establishment but his career trajectory apparently shifted in the early-1590s, when he resigned two London benefices to move to Ireland. This study reconstructs the years preceding this move focussing on Hanmer’s professional advancement and on the publication of his first works, which will enable us to gauge his multifaceted profile as a scholar and as a clergyman. While he courted favour and established his name as a learned preacher, archival records bear a clear witness to his highly controversial conduct.</div>Angela Andreani2018-03-28T00:00:00ZEdmund Spenser’s Ancient Hope: The Rise and Fall of the Dream of the Golden Age inhttp://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/23526963-04401004
<div><strong> Source: </strong>Volume 44, Issue 1, pp 73 - 103</div><div>In the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, a debate has rumbled over the sources and significance of Platonic and Neoplatonic motifs in Edmund Spenser’s poetry. While this debate has focused on the presence (or absence) of various aspects of Platonism and/or Neoplatonism, critics have largely ignored the hints of magic derived from Neoplatonism. Through the probable influence of John Dee, Marsilio Ficino, and Giordano Bruno as well as Spenser’s own wide-ranging and particular reading, <i xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/">The Faerie Queene</i> makes it evident that the English poet found himself attracted to an ancient hope in the restoration of a Golden Age that would be inaugurated by a great monarch. However, by the end of the poem, Spenser has largely lost faith in the restoration of this Golden Age; what he has uncovered along the way forces a retreat to Christian hope in his personal salvation.</div>Jesse Russell2018-03-28T00:00:00ZLeonardo’s Dragons—The “Rider Fighting a Dragon” Sketch as an Allegory of Leonardo’s Concept of Knowledgehttp://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/23526963-04401005
<div><strong> Source: </strong>Volume 44, Issue 1, pp 104 - 139</div><div>It has long been known that Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches showing a rider in combat with a dragon do not portray St. George. Viewing these sketches in connection with several of Leonardo’s writings, this essay suggests that they are allegories that should be interpreted on several levels. On the basic level, these combat scenes represent the battle of contraries, based on the symbolism common to Leonardo’s period where a combat between an equestrian and a dragon represented the clash of light versus darkness, life versus death, good versus evil, etc. However, I argue that they also comment on the scientific and philosophical issues that occupied Leonardo, including action versus reaction and the true concept of knowledge as opposed to falsehood and sophistry. This essay interprets these sketches as offering an insight into Leonardo’s analogical approach, which connects common symbolism to his personal perspective on science and philosophy, and thus points to a new way of looking at Leonardo’s drawings and paintings and decodes new aspects of Leonardo’s personal symbolism.</div>Sharon Khalifa-Gueta2018-03-28T00:00:00Z